Box

A little while ago I went to see the joint exhibition by Kentaro Taki and Ko Nakajima at AUT's St Paul Street Gallery. They work with the digital media along with installations. I was initially looking forward to seeing Bild:Muell (2008) but upon getting to the gallery, I couldn't find it. I still wonder if it is there in the gallery somewhere but seeing that work on the promotional material reminded of me of a graphic explosion of the video culture presented in Rauschenberg's Retroactive I.

It was a strange exhibition. It felt messy, and although this may be the artist's hand at play, I couldn't help but feel it was a bit of a post-explosion zone. It even made it hard to appreciate the great moments of the exhibition. One segment (amidst shattered CRT screens and bits of banal bush) that I did like was Living in a Box (pictured) which was truly enrapturing. In the video projection, bits of body writhed around in what looked like a white bento box. In particular, the hand was creepy visually and aurally (the nails clicked on the sides of it's compartment), and even the gestures were charged with some cryptic emotion.

There was a great range of work, prints and Japanese calligraphy too, but it didn't seem to completely mesh together. Instead I found myself making trivial links between pieces and media. Upon leaving the exhibition, I caught the last act of Living in a Box, the orderly bento box being bashed to smithereens by a mallet-wielding female. Well, that says something at least.